This Cohen/Hydra tribute event I attended last night (along with Cohenite friends) was simply brilliant, even better than the one I enjoyed last year by these two very talented Greek performers, Chris Fatouros and Spiros Falieros.
The show, as developed for this event, is the resultant of the collaboration between The Hellenic Museum and these two performers, under the umbrella of Melbourne Music Week. A driving force behind the show and the person who had a major input into it, is Chris’s father Harry Fatouros, whom I had the privilege to meet and chat with.
The show itself is basically Leonard’s songs performed beautifully by the two boys, Chris masterfully on his guitar doing most of the vocals with his superb clear voice, along with Spiros on his keyboard producing a wonderful array of gorgeous complementary sounds. These songs were interspersed with audio-visual projections on twin screens, featuring commentary on Hydra, as well as pithy and humorous excerpts from documentary footage of Leonard (with just a background image of Leonard performing towards the end). The show was a well integrated whole and the choice of songs was most appropriate, in order as follows:
Famous Blue Raincoat; Dance Me to the End of Love; The Future; So Long Marianne; Bird on a Wire; In My Secret Life; Who By Fire; Everybody Knows; Suzanne; Gypsy Wife; Chelsea Hotel; First We Take Manhattan;
Hallelujah; closing with the rousing and well known Greek song,
‘Misirlou’.
To sum up, this is the sort of show that is of so high a standard and of such supreme entertainment value, that it deserves to have a far broader audience exposure, definitely in the Cohenite world at least, something I would like to see happen if it is at all possible.
Cheers,
Andrew
P.S. A nice little bonus for me on the night, was as to meet a delightful flamboyantly dressed hairdresser (Simon) who loves Cohen and actually did Leonard's hair in London in about 2002!
